The library system is moving to a new mobile app! The current library mobile app will not be available after February. This only relates to the library’s mobile app (used on phones and tablets). You can still connect to the library through your desktop, laptop, or mobile device’s web browser at https://rcpl.bibliocommons.com/ Projected date for the new mobile app is March. We apologize for the inconvenience

Saints for All Occasions

A Novel

"Nora and Theresa Flynn are twenty-one and seventeen when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan--a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand. Fifty years later, Nora is the matriarch of a big Catholic family with four grown children: John, a successful, if opportunistic, political consultant; Bridget, privately preparing to have a baby with her girlfriend; Brian, at loose ends after a failed baseball career; and Patrick, Nora's favorite, the beautiful boy who gives her no end of heartache. Estranged from her sister and cut off from the world, Theresa is a cloistered nun, living in an abbey in rural Vermont. Until, after decades of silence, a sudden death forces Nora and Theresa to confront the choices they made so long ago. A graceful, supremely moving novel from one of our most beloved writers, Saints for All Occasions explores the fascinating, funny, and sometimes achingly sad ways a secret at the heart of one family both breaks them and binds them together"-- Provided by publisher.

This book was disappointing. It was recommended in a Seattle Times article, but it is really not very good. The characters are not believable or especially likeable. This is another dysfunctional family, but the characters are not very interesting. Each character is a caricature of some "type." The sister who becomes a nun is just not convincing. The author alludes to problems (e.g, pedophile priests) in the church, but her treatment is superficial. I kept reading, thinking it would get better and would tie together in the end. It did not. I am sorry I wasted my time reading this book.

The sloppy editing of this book was annoying. The medal the sisters pinned to Patrick's diaper, for example, became a pendant later in the book. The details of a fight involving Patrick and Rory McClain similarly shifted.

It was also annoying that so many story lines were endlessly repeated without ever being brought to a natural conclusion. Couldn't there have been a few words of mourning for poor Charlie? How could Nora not know what happened to the family farm after her brother's death? How could John and Patrick not notice how much Patrick resembled Rory? It isn't credible that in a hard-drinking, boisterous Irish family that nobody ever slipped and mentioned the absent Aunt Theresa. Patrick never told John about the pedophile priest?

If you enjoyed Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn, this book with its multilayered story about two Irish sisters who emigrated to Boston Massachusetts in the 1950’s will be equally appealing. Like Toibin, Sullivan can create memorable characters who shape and are shaped by their experiences. When one sister gives birth out of wedlock to a baby boy, the other sister and her husband adopt the baby. This action shapes the entire story, showing how, even in close knit families like the immigrant Irish, secrets which are meant to shelter others from pain can impact all in the family.

HMWLibrary2017
Jul 14, 2017

There are a million Irish Catholic immigrant stories out there, but this one stands out. The characters are well-drawn and interesting. I especially loved the ending which stubbornly refused to answer every single unanswered question and tie the whole story up with a nice pretty bow.